How viable is it to do bench research in md only?

[lull]

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Are there opportunities for training in bench research with MD only?

 

[Xyzcannon18]

Yes, a lot of schools even have a rotation built into research anyway. The ease of joining a lab that interest you and you enjoy easily obviously depends a lot on the school though.

Edit: I misread this, you're asking about bench with an MD and I assumed bench as an MD candidate. My apologies.

 

[Engrailed]

Definitely possible 1000%. Getting the MD is the hard part. Doing research with an MD is extremely do-able.

 

[strappysandals]

.

 

[LizzyM]

Are there opportunities for training in bench research with MD only?

Many residencies include a research year. That can be bench research or something else.
There are post-doc fellowships where one can build additonal skills after residency. That can include bench research training with someone doing that type of work.
After that, it is a matter of getting the funding to spend some time in the lab while also supporting oneself as a clinician. That ratio (lab vs clinic) can vary depending on how much research funding you have.

 

[lull]

According to my friends in medical schools, it is definitely do-able. It is rather risky, however. As we all know bench research can take up a ton of time and yield nothing. The general theme I have heard about is that research experience without productivity is relatively meaningless on your residency apps. This is why many choose to do clinical work, as publications are easier to come by.

On the other hand, as with most things: If it something you love to do and will contribute to your overall happiness in life..... do it.

That was definitely my concern. As I am planning for next year’s application, it’s hard deciding whether to pursue an md only or md/phd if I am interested in bench research, but knowing how difficult it is to publish in med school.

 

[OfMiceAndWomen]

That was definitely my concern. As I am planning for next year’s application, it’s hard deciding whether to pursue an md only or md/phd if I am interested in bench research, but knowing how difficult it is to publish in med school.

For MD vs. MD/PhD, I feel like it depends on what you want your clinical/research ratio to be, and what kind of research, even within bench research, you want to do. To answer your original question, I know several MDs who run large basic science labs (my PI included), but these labs are usually more translational research, if you make that distinction between translational and basic science.

If you want to work with more "technical" science stuff, like on the molecular level, with different organism models, using complex biostats etc., that's where MD/PhD would be helpful. I think you should try to envision what kind of bench research you would like to do and what you might want your week-to-week to look like as a physician/physician-scientist.

 

[premed375]

For MD vs. MD/PhD, I feel like it depends on what you want your clinical/research ratio to be, and what kind of research, even within bench research, you want to do. To answer your original question, I know several MDs who run large basic science labs (my PI included), but these labs are usually more translational research, if you make that distinction between translational and basic science.

If you want to work with more "technical" science stuff, like on the molecular level, with different organism models, using complex biostats etc., that's where MD/PhD would be helpful. I think you should try to envision what kind of bench research you would like to do and what you might want your week-to-week to look like as a physician/physician-scientist.

Would you mind elaborating on the difference between "translational" bench research and "basic" bench research in your view? What type of bench research would be better suited for an MD vs. MD/PhD?

 

[OntologicalDamnation]

Paul Kalanithi did research during his neurosurgery residency.

Anyways, I feel that bench research that involve short time frame projects is doable. I know that neuroscience projects, in particular, can take 4 years to publish a high quality paper. I personally want to do some sort of bioengineering research as a medical student. It seems more doable than experiments that involve constantly being under the hood every day.

 

[OfMiceAndWomen]

Would you mind elaborating on the difference between "translational" bench research and "basic" bench research in your view? What type of bench research would be better suited for an MD vs. MD/PhD?

There isn't a super clear distinction. My lab, which is primarily translational, has a combo of MDs, MD/PhDs, and PhDs (and of course, the lowly BS). I would say translational research directly involves human samples -- blood, saliva, tissue, (stem/primary) cells, etc. Most clinical research outsources testing of blood and saliva to companies like Quest or the hospital's path department. In translational bench research, the researchers themselves use human samples to elucidate new mechanistic pathways, come up with novel tests, or find more effective treatments, and this research is often just two or three steps away from being practical for patients.

In my view, "basic science" bench research deals with non-human, non-mouse, or non-primate specimens -- so research that uses bacteria, zebrafish, c. elegans, etc... I would also consider some research that is strictly on the molecular level (like molecular genetics, protein modeling, chemistry stuff) to lean more toward the basic science.

An MD (or MD/PhD) is required for a team to do clinical or translational research because you need someone who has patients, can consent them, collect specimens, and has access to patient records. Doing an MD/PhD gives you a leg up in doing basic science research, because you're afforded the basic science training that MDs don't necessarily get. PhD training gives you much more rigorous understanding of the scientific process, the nuances behind different experiments and techniques, and more proposal/grant-writing training. Also, PhDs do much much much more biostats than MDs do. We outsource all of our complex biostats to PhDs. Even running just logistic regression or ANOVA is difficult for many MDs.

As a result, MD/PhDs are in a better position to start and run their own labs, but that's not to say MDs can't do it as well. MDs who want to do bench research just have to figure all of this out as they go along in their training, and it's much more unstructured.

 

[OntologicalDamnation]

Also, PhDs do much much much more biostats than MDs do. We outsource all of our complex biostats to PhDs. Even running just logistic regression or ANOVA is difficult for many MDs.

This. I've worked with so many resident surgeons and our projects would get delayed by weeks because no one could figure out how to use the stats softwares or run a simple t test. Haha

 

[Lucca]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: depends.

It should be noted that all three of this year's Nobel prize winners in Medicine had MD and were practicing physicians who did bench research. Only one had an additional PhD

This, while true, might obscure the fact that what all of them do have in common is additional basic science training somewhere along their career path. Ratcliffe earned an MD from Cambridge 9 years after his MBChB (equivalent of our MD degree); the additional MD at Cambridge is reserved for physicians with significant research appointments at the university and is essentially equivalent to an MD completing an additional PhD or postdoc in the states. Kaelin did 3-4 yrs of postdoc after his fellowship at DFCI with Dave Livingston.

Just writing this to underscore the earlier point that the degrees themselves dont matter as much as the training you get to do the work you want to do. MD/PhD is one (very structured, well supported) way to become a physician scientist but it is not the only way. Indeed, Burroughs Wellcome Fund has been throwing a lot of money in recent years at training MD only physician scientists in recognition that the MD/PhD path isnt suitable for everyone or even an option depending on how early / late someone comes to research (Kaelin himself admitted he didnt think he was any good at research as an undergraduate) as has the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub and other institutions. There are also MD only degree pathways at certain medical schools which are very amenable to doing substantial basic or translational research (Cleveland Clinic / Lerner 5 yr MD, Berg Scholars @ Stanford, HST @ HMS, etc.).

 

[Lucca]

Also adding there’s literature looking at interest / outcomes / demographics of the physician scientist workforce which discuss the many factors which play into the career path. Here’s a few recent papers with a lot of good info:

Developing Physician-Scientists: A Perspective - PMC

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

NIH RePORT - Physician Scientist-Workforce Report 2014 (2014 physician scientist workforce report)

JCI Insight - The national MD-PhD program outcomes study: Relationships between medical specialty, training duration, research effort, and career paths (2019 results of Detailed career survey of 10,000 md/PhD graduates 1975-2014 matriculating cohorts)

https://store.aamc.org/downloadable/download/sample/sample_id/162/ (2018 AAMC MD/PhD Cohort Study)